Toyota Altezza - After Twelve Power Hour
Recently I came across something I hadn’t seen for a while. Right there in front of me was a nice looking crystal white colored Toyota Altezza RS200 belonging to Yong from After Twelve workshop in Sunway. Although the crystal-effect paintjob was clearly of the highest quality yet it wasn’t the only thing that caught my attention. This Altezza has quite a few other special features in boosting its appearance and among them was a CF hood, Vertex front bumper, TRD front grill, D1 Toniguchi style side mirrors and those JDM smoked headlamps. Guess the 17-inch Volks Racing rims with Yokohama Advan Neova tyres also contributes towards the appearance as well. I’d say that it surely is a nice looking Altezza but what about the performance upgrade?
Guess the glimmer of interest in my eyes was way too obvious, and on seeing this, the owner decided to give me the rundown on his RS200 Altezza. Normally I would head straight to the engine bay but this time around I decided to start with the interior of this RS200. Pop open the doors and you’ll see that the interior has gone through quite a transformation giving hints to curious onlookers about its overall performance capability. At the interior, one can see that the owner has decided to install a full bucket Bride seat for the driver along with a semi-bucket type seat from the same brand for the passenger. That’s not all as I later discovered that the door panels and rear seats also carry the Bride branding. Other changes are the Momo steering with SARD quick release kit, additional gauges and gadgets such as the HKS EVC 5 Controller, Blitz timer and A’PEXi RSM.
Next, it was time to take a look under the CF hood. As expected (doesn’t take a rocket scientist to notice the intercooler) this Altezza has gone through an engine swap process. Although the Yamaha tuned 3S-GE engine capable of producing approximately 207hp powers the RS200 models yet for this featured car, the original engine was put aside in order to make way for a turbocharged engine. Yup! Seemingly obsessed with power, this Altezza is at present running on a twin turbo 1JZ engine…
(Get the full story in Extremekars May 2009 issue) |
